Bhikkhuni Kuan Chien

Taiwan

Bhikkhuni Kuan Chien, 33 years in the robes, offers Dhamma talks around the world, including: the USA, Canada, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, and China. Her books, must-reads for Buddhist art historians, total 14, and a Buddhist art quarterly, the Chuefeng Quarterly. Since 2002 she set up a television channel airing 37 series, a total of 1,355 DVDs.

From 1999 to 2007 she was the Abbess of Fayuan Temple, and in 2007 she moved to Yongshiu Vihara and established the Chuefeng Buddhist Art Institute and Foundation which offers courses on location and via internet. In 2017 she established the Chuefeng Center of Hsinchu.

Most notably this love of Buddhist art arose in her youth, when at the age of 3, her grandmother carried her to the Buddhist temple, circumambulating the Buddhist sculptures and chanting the Buddha’s name. Then her father, a landscape architect, made many Buddhist sculptures for Fayuan Temple in Xinchu and elsewhere, and she ran around and looked up to finished and half-finished sculptures, making them her dearest childhood playmates.

She graduated from Tamkang University as an architect, studied further, and received a M.S. in Architecture from National Cheng Kung University. Then she and her father worked together creating Buddhist structures, artwork and landscapes. They restored Kaiyuan Temple in Tainan, constructed the Blessed Kuan Yin in Henan Temple, Hualien, the Silent Contemplation Hut in Niumian Mount, Puli, the Silent Contemplation Building which later became the Yu Yu Yang Museum in Taipei, and the Peace-granting Bodhisattva in Da’an Park, Taipei.

Some of her book titles:

Ancient Chinese Buddhist Sculpture

The Buddhist Caves of the Northern Liang Dynasty

The Pillared Temple-Caves of China & India

The Stone Buddha Sculptures in Dingzhou (an e-book)

Northern Wei Dynasty Buddhism: The Longmen Caves

Tang Dynasty Buddhism and Buddhist Arts

The International Women’s Meditation Center Foundation received Thai government approval on September 20, 2010.